Winter Style | Wooden Shim Wreath

I had so much fun making my Fall wreath this year, that I knew I wanted to try another DIY wreath for Winter. I started exploring Pinterest for inspiration and came across this tutorial from Anna K Originals. 

I loved the simplicity of just using overlapping shims, but I started thinking about how I could put my own spin on it. A trip to Lowe's, Michaels and Joann's later (because I can never remember to get everything I need at one craft store...) I was ready to tackle this DIY myself.

Read Anna's tutorial, here.

My shims were a good bit longer than the ones that Anna used, so it took me a second to figure out the placement I needed to get the right effect. My tip would be to think of the space between the inner and outer ends of each shim as a triangle shape. Try to recreate this same triangle proportion with each shim that you place. This helped me to keep the angles and spacing of each shim pretty even, but it will never be 100% perfect. That's the beauty of crafting though, it doesn't need to be perfect to be awesome!

Anna finished her wreath with wood stain and a cute red scarf. To fit in with my Winter Color Scheme, I decided to make my own green stain using craft paint and water!

First I took a tip from Nicole Curtis of Rehab Addict, and wet down my shims with water before staining them. The soft wood of shims will absorb stain really well, but you can often get light and dark spots where it absorbs more or less stain. Wetting the wood first will open the pores to help it stain more evenly. I just used a piece of an old cotton t-shirt to apply the water. For the stain, I just combined about 8 drops of my Martha Stewart Craft Paint in Seaweed with about 1/2 cup of water, mixing thoroughly and then applying with another cotton rag.  

After the stain dried, I used hot glue to attach a couple of white silk poinsettias to finish off my wreath. What do you think of the finished product? Is this a DIY you could see yourself trying?

And, I'm trying something new! If you would love to have this wreath for your home but aren't the crafty type, I made a second wreath that is available for purchase through this website! Check out the listing by clicking, here!